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Chapter 24: Doubt or Faith, Life or Death: The Bases of Different Paths

The first question:

Osho,I feel that neither am I the feeling type altogether, nor am I the intellectual type. I am a mixed type. Should I do two different kinds of techniques alternatively? Please guide.

This is a significant question. Many things will have to be understood. One: whenever you feel that you are neither the intellectual type nor the emotional type, know well that you belong to the intellectual type, because confusion is part of it. The emotional type is never confused. One who belongs to the emotional type will not feel such confusion. Emotion is always total and whole, intellect is always fragmented, divided, confused. That is the very nature of intellect. Why? Because intellect depends on doubt and emotion depends on faith. Wherever doubt is, division will be, and doubt can never be total. How can it be? The very nature of doubt is doubting. It can never be total! You cannot doubt a thing totally. If you doubt a thing totally, it becomes faith.

Doubt is always confusion, and basically, when you doubt, you also doubt your doubt. You cannot be certain about it. A doubting mind cannot be even certain about doubt. So layers of confusion will be there, and each layer will be based on another layer of doubt and confusion.

The intellectual type always feels this way. The feeling will always be there that “I am nowhere, I do not belong anywhere,” or “Sometimes I am here and sometimes there, sometimes this and sometimes that.” But the emotional type is at ease with himself. Because trust is the base, emotion is not divided, it is whole, individual. So if you have any doubt, if you cannot feel certain to what type you belong, know well you belong to the intellectual type. Then practice techniques which are meant for the intellectual type. If you do not feel any confusion, then only do you belong to the emotional type, the feeling type.

For example, a Ramakrishna: he is a feeling type. You cannot create doubt in him; that is impossible, because a doubt can be created only when basically the doubt exists already. No one can create doubt in you if it is not already hidden there. Others can only help it to come out, they cannot create it. Neither can faith be created. That too others can help to manifest, to come out.